Of Online Dating

In the months after my separation I had friends desperate to get me signed up and profiled on at least one online dating site.  They were so so excited about the prospect of writing up a profile for me, which in itself was quite flattering. Personally I was quite resistant to the concept because it seemed to me to be quite passive and reactive and potentially slightly soul-destroying. That being said some of my friends that have met decent long-term partners through online dating so my exposure to these sites isn’t completely negative.Anyway.. after about a year of sitting on my couch avoiding all contact (and after a few wines..), I built up enough courage to sign up to a site. But which one?There was FindSomeone. It has been around for ages but my main resistance to it was that I really desired a degree of anonymity. I knew too many people on it and didn’t want to broadcast my loneliness or ‘moving on’ to people from my past.A few Google searches later I had a list... NZDating, AdultFriendFinder (I’m an adult, but oh is that what you’re about??) , BeNaughty, Matchfinder, Match.com, LoveAwake... It was all a bit overwhelming really.I settled on Match.com. Mainly because of the ad that popped up in FaceBook - looked a little like this:Apparently there are ridiculously cute lonely women out there. And they’re all on Match.com. Really good to know!So I created my profile. Apparently it was quite good (when I admitted its existence and ran it past my friends). I chose a decent recent photo, subscribed and in the words of Match.com looked for the ‘fun to really begin’.Well. It was an eye-opener. Firstly, I could not believe how many women would put bad photos of themselves online. Perhaps I was being a little judgmental, but I figured that this is a place where you’re really wanting to stand out in the crowd so surely you would want to have the best photo you can find and have the best profile? Why would you have photos of you, hammered, in a bar with friends? Why would you have a photo of you with an ex.?I really didn’t enjoy the process. I browsed a profile and then ‘winked’. Then she would ‘wink’ back. At that point I’d send an email. She’d send one back. I’d send another and so on. Soon there was so much ‘winking’ and emailing going on it just became exhausting keeping up. Who was who and at what stage of our contact were we at? The other problem was that since it was a passive/reactive process, there could be one or two weeks between contacts which compounded the problems.I got up the courage and met up with a few of the women I’d corresponded with.The first was a serial dater. Over a wine she told me her entire dating history of the last five years. Really? Telling me things tend to not work out for you is a terrible idea on a first date! Suffice to say, NO connection.The second was a devout Catholic. An actual 40yr old virgin who lived with her sister and enjoyed karaoke. Sigh.The third was a school-teacher who also happened to be a churchy and who suffered from massive self-doubt. The problem for me there was that she knew people from my past that I really had no interest in reconnecting with. At that point I was just not in an emotional position to be able to build her up as I was really needing to rebuild my self first.The fourth was also a churchy. Actually she worked in a church. (What was it about my profile that attracted churchgoing women?) She was quite lovely but had extremely strong moral views. She was keen to get to know me more and possibly ‘save’ me (again), but at the end of the day I had to say, honestly, that I was on a journey which if shared with her would probably compromise her belief system and I simply wasn’t prepared to do that to her.After that I shut down my profile.It was just too hard for me meeting women that were really desperately looking for ‘the one’ or ‘Mr Right’, and me not being able to give them that. I guess that I missed the key point of Match.com being ‘find your match’. I wasn’t ready to ‘find my match’.Six months have passed since my foray into online dating. I realise now that I entered into that world without knowing what I was looking for. It wasn’t fair on the women I met.I wonder how many people fail online simply because they’re not ready for a relationship whilst thinking that that is what they want. Yet more lessons learned.Simon.